I’m involved in a writing project about iOS 4 (more on that later) and, in the course of that work, I’m buying and using iPhone apps in various genres (productivity, health and fitness, entertainment, etc.). I’m astonished at how many of them just aren’t ready for prime time.

Peace Alarm Clock, with a beautiful graphic interface and some intriguing features, is complicated to set up and simply setting the alarm (a whiz on Apple’s Clock app) is jerky and slow. It was so kludgy, in fact, that I went and checked some other apps to make sure something horrible hadn’t affect my entire iPhone. (It hadn’t.)

It’s a mystery to me why developers would want to put out something that provides such a disappointing user experience. I can certainly understand putting out a simple app with nice but limited features, and adding more features as you go, but to have a beautiful idea that just…doesn’t…work for people?

The App Store is definitely “caveat emptor” for the moment. I’ll post later on about the pros and cons of relying on the buyer reviewing system to help you choose an app.